Lake Temagami, ON

My name is Gord Miller, I’m an ecologist and former environmental commissioner of Ontario. Water has played a major role in my life. I’ve been around many bodies of water, even my education was based on water, the ecology of water. But there is one place, one lake and the lands around that lake that have drawn me for many decades and that is the lake at the centre of the Anishinaabe Temagami First Nations that we call Temagami.

Lake Temagami is a very very special place, a very spiritual place, a place of ancient trees that go back centuries before White Man ever crossed the land. It remains a touchstone for me, a place I go to. In terms of our culture I own some land in that wilderness but of course we don’t really own land with 350 year old trees on it. We occupy it, we possess it, and it persists long after we are gone. Temagami is my watermark.